Old habits die hard

Thomas was on my mind a lot the other day, but in that old familiar way that makes me so desperately sad.

As time passes I'm able to think about him without crossing over into the land of complete anguish every single time. It has become so much a part of me, his life and his loss, that it's almost difficult to think of his birth and death as events. or to think of him as a baby that I bore. It's like he's just part of me - the way I see the world, the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs, my waking, my sleeping.

But there are days when I slip back into my old ways - when I find myself thinking of him as someone who slipped away. Someone I just can't reach. Someone who is lost forever.

Those moment make me ache. And I remember that ache so well because it plagued me 24 hours a day from the moment Thomas died for months on end. I'd almost forgotten what it was like until it showed up the other evening as I was waiting for My Beloved to come home from work.

He'd sent me an e-mail (the contents of which I won't discuss in deference to his privacy) that broke my heart and made me think about our son as the little soul we lost.

It's amazing what the mind will do to protect itself. It's only now that I realize the complicated measures it must go through every second of every day in order to ensure that my right foot will continue to follow my left foot step after step after step.

I know we lost our little boy, but I absorb that knowledge and make it part of me instead of simply carrying it along with me. Absorbing it makes it easier. Carrying it, well I might as well be dragging the CN tower around with me all day.

I don't know if this makes any sense at all to anyone but me, but that's the only way I can describe it. I have to internalize Thomas or the sorrow of his not being with me would suffocate me.

Anyway, the other night as I pondered the e-mail from My Beloved while I waited by the window to see him coming home to me, I thought about our boy. I opened the window, rested my arms on the sill, looked up into the darkened sky and quietly sang him a lullaby.

And let myself miss him like crazy.